The Windows 8 RTM was released yesterday to TechNet subscribers and this morning I decided to start the day off by reloading my business computer. I’ve been running the Release Preview on a netbook and on some VM’s without issue. Everything seemed to go well until I tried to load several applications that required the .NET Framework 3.5. Each of them failed to install stating they were unable to add the .NET framework so I decided to install it manually. Here’s the process I used to try to install it through the GUI:

I started out by selecting the “.NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0) feature:

I selected “Download files from Windows Update”:

Here’s the error message I received “Windows couldn’t complete the requested changes. Windows couldn’t connect to the Internet to download necessary files. Make sure that you’re connected to the Internet, and click “Retry” to try again. Error code: 0x800F0906″

After clicking “Close” as shown in the previous image, I received the following error: “An error has occurred. Not all of the features were successfully changed.”:

I also tried to enable the .NET Framework 3.5 feature by using PowerShell which produced another error: “Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature : The source files could not be downloaded. Use the “source” option to specify the location of the files that are required to restore the feature. For more information on specifying a source location, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=243077.At line:1 char:1+ Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName ‘NetFx3’+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature], COMException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.Dism.Commands.EnableWindowsOptionalFeatureCommand“:

I was able to finally resolve this problem by mounting an ISO of Windows 8 on “E” drive and running the following PowerShell command:

Why on earth should one have to muck about like this just to get a simple feature installed. This is such core functionality that does not work properly that I am thinking that they never bothered to test windows 8. Frankly is disgusting that this has found its way into the RTM.

This problem can also be a symptom of another problem. If your Windows 8 machine is on a domain where group policy has it downloading updates from a WSUS server that hasn’t yet been patched with KB2734608, then your Windows 8 machine will have this problem (as well as a problem where it is unable to install Windows Updates while connected to the domain).

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